1.

WHAT IS ETHERCHANNEL

--etherchannel is a port link aggregation technology

--this concept is developed by cisco
--it provides
i)fault-tolerant
ii)high speed link between switches,servers and routers
--etherchannel technology allows multiple physical links to combine into one
logical link
--it groups multiple interfaces together to act as a single inteface
--stp treat thsi goup as a single interface
--logical instance of physical interfaces are called as port channel
--etherchannel configured as L2 and L3 also
--upto 8 links can be used to combine into one logical link
--it load balances traffic over all physical links
--all the physical links must be of same speed,same duplex

2.WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF ETHERCHANNEL

i)increased bandwidth
--multiple physical links work as single logical links results increased bandwidth

ii)load balancing the traffic

--it can allow multiple devices to communicate with a single device using differnt
physical paths at a time

iii)provides fault-tolerant network

--if one of the physical link goes down the other links can continue the
communication

iv)improved performance of layer-2 network

--due to the multiple physical links network traffic congestion becomes low

2.ETHERCHANNEL MODES
--etherchannel can be configured either
i)manually(on both switches,PAgp and LAcp disabled)

ii)dynamically
a)PAGP(between only cisco switches)
b)LACP(between cisco and non-cisco switches/between cisco switches also)

a)PAGP
--PAGP stands for port aggregation protocol
--this is the cisco proprietary protocol which work in between cisco switches only
--it has two modes
i)desirable
ii)auto
desirable-------auto
desirable-------desirable
auto------------auto
desirable-------on

b)LACP
i)active
ii)passive

active----active
active----passive
passive----passive
3. CONFIGURING ETHERCHANNEL BETWEEN TWO SWITCHES
i)connect both the switches using 4 cross cables
ii)configure etherchannel on both switches
sw1
sw1(config)#int range f0/1-4
sw1(config-if-range)#channel-group 2 mode desirable
sw1(config-if-range)#^z
sw1#sh etherchannel summary

output
Number of channel-groups in use: 1
Number of aggregators: 1

Group Port-channel Protocol Ports

------+-------------+-----------+----------------------------------------------

2 Po2(SD) PAgP Fa0/1(I) Fa0/2(I) Fa0/3(I) Fa0/4(I)

sw2
sw2
sw2(config)#int range f0/1-4
sw2(config-if-range)#channel-group 2 mode auto
sw2(config-if-range)#^z
sw2#sh etherchannel summary

output
Number of channel-groups in use: 1
Number of aggregators: 1

Group Port-channel Protocol Ports

------+-------------+-----------+----------------------------------------------

2 Po2(SD) PAgP Fa0/1(I) Fa0/2(I) Fa0/3(I) Fa0/4(I)

sw2#sh etherchannel port-channel

Channel-group listing:
----------------------

Group: 2
----------
Port-channels in the group:
---------------------------

Port-channel: Po2
------------

Age of the Port-channel = 00d:00h:03m:39s

Logical slot/port = 2/2 Number of ports = 4
GC = 0x00000000 HotStandBy port = null
Port state = Port-channel
Protocol = PAGP
Port Security = Disabled

Ports in the Port-channel:

Index Load Port EC state No of bits
------+------+------+------------------+-----------
0 00 Fa0/4 Automatic 0
0 00 Fa0/2 Automatic 0
0 00 Fa0/1 Automatic 0
0 00 Fa0/3 Automatic 0
Time since last port bundled: 00d:00h:03m:22s Fa0/3